Irving Fradkin's crusade for students gets filmmaker's attention

Saturday

Mar 29, 2014 at 2:30 PM

Irving Fradkin was done waiting. He wanted to start the party and, more importantly, get back to work. Seated near the entrance to Durfee High School's Tradewinds restaurant, he had patiently greeted everyone who walked through the door, all the people who came to celebrate him and his legacy.

Phil Devitt

Irving Fradkin was done waiting. He wanted to start the party and, more importantly, get back to work. Seated near the entrance to Durfee High School's Tradewinds restaurant, he had patiently greeted everyone who walked through the door, all the people who came to celebrate him and his legacy.

Now that the room was full, the Fall River man pulled himself up from the chair with his cane and tried to cut through the din.

"Everybody! Everybody! Take a seat! We want to get the program going!"

Fradkin, 92, has never been good at waiting. When he wants something done, he does it. He's the retired optometrist who 56 years ago founded Dollars for Scholars, asking the city's adults to provide the money — at least $1 each — to make college more affordable for the city's students. He ignored the naysayers long enough to prove the idea worked, then helped communities across the country launch their own chapters. Scholarship America, as the program is now known, has since given $3 billion to 2 million students nationwide.

Fradkin won't quit. The day after a 2013 dinner marking his "retirement" from active participation in the organization, he called friend Daryl Gonyon and said, "We've got so much work to do." He wasn't kidding. Several months later he was on Katie Couric's nationally syndicated daytime talk show, extolling the program's success and the city — the Scholarship City — that set the example.

It was with the same tenacious spirit March 21 that Fradkin stood and, despite recent heart surgery and failing sight, called on his guests to be seated. But conversation was loud at Tradewinds and Fradkin's voice, weakened by time, was too soft for most people to hear.

Amy Serrano heard the voice. She was standing a few feet away, her back turned, headphones fixed to her ears, when Fradkin stood and spoke. She pivoted, careful to keep her video camera steady, and focused the lens on her subject. She lingered there for a few seconds, grinning as she watched Fradkin on the mini screen.

Serrano, an award-winning Louisiana filmmaker, spent a week filming Fradkin and his wife of 67 years, Charlotte, at their Highlands home. Fradkin's story will be the subject of a feature-length documentary about Scholarship America. Titled "Power of a Dollar: The Story of an Optometrist with the Vision to Educate America," the film will examine Fradkin's humble origins as a child of immigrant refugees who had been persecuted in their native Russia; his parents' efforts to provide young Fradkin with a good education; and how Fradkin's upbringing motivated the work he has kept up for more than five decades.

"I've been very touched by Dr. Fradkin," Serrano said. "I'm a writer and poet by vocation, so when I say I have no words, it's actually a compliment. I have no words."

Serrano said the film will premiere in Louisiana, followed by screenings around the country and television distribution.

The documentary, for Fradkin, is "beautiful." It presents a new opportunity, much like the Couric show, to inspire people to make differences in their own communities. He could never fully retire from doing this kind of work.

"We can make a better world," Fradkin said into the microphone after lunch. This time everyone heard him. "I am a firm believer in a supreme being. God gave us a brain, and if that brain is educated, that brain could make you the doctor, the president, the inventor. We are all God's children. If we work together, we can make a better world for all."

The documentary also will feature the Jefferson Parish, La., chapter of Dollars for Scholars, the only Scholarship America affiliate to have been recognized nationally three times for spearheading innovative ways to aid students. Lisa Conescu, the chapter's CEO, traveled from the New Orleans suburbs to praise Fradkin in person.

"This program began in the heart of Dr. Fradkin," she said. "We have been imbued with that heart, carrying it to the children in our community. ... It's his enthusiasm that has really motivated us to keep changing our chapter and keep making it better."

Conescu's chapter has awarded $15 million to 4,500 students since it was founded in 1993.

After the celebration, guests gathered behind Serrano as the filmmaker held up her cell phone. Serrano wanted to take a group picture similar to the celebrity-packed selfie Ellen Degeneres snapped at the Academy Awards. Her goal is to send it to Degeneres, who hails from Jefferson Parish, in the hope that it gets Scholarship America more exposure. At the center of the photo sat Fradkin, smiling wide after an afternoon of praise from longtime friends such as Mel Yoken.

"He is one of the sweetest, kindest, most affable people that God ever put on this planet," Yoken said of Fradkin. "He wakes up every morning and do you know what he says? 'I am going to make this world a better place.' And damn it, he does."

Phil Devitt can be reached at editor@fallriverspirit.com or (508) 979-4492.

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